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Watership Down is still a great favourite of mine. A real epic adventure so fully imagined that you almost forget the characters are rabbits. It works much better I think that later animals-as-heroes stories; Brian Jaques is good but the work still feels like fantasy. In Watership Down you come...

I went to a reading by Louis De Bernieres (a teacher before he was an author) and he complained that random school pupils now write to him, under the thin disguise of being fans, to ask him for help with their assignments on his work. At least they were assigned a decent book, I suppose...

Like it. Some nice misdirection in the story, and good contrast between the cheerful girl and her despairing mother. Thought-provoking. A few bits of constructive criticism, maybe... 1. Is it necessary to switch viewpoints in so short a story? Couldn't it be all from Stacie's viewpoint...

Granted, but it turns out that your 'interviewer' isn't really employed by the company in question, just some lunatic off the streets, so when you turn up on Monday they have no idea who you are... I wish I could make a wish that turned out good and not evil.

I would go so far as to say that doing an English degree actively damaged my ability to write novels, at least for a few years. I kept trying to be literary and clever when I should have been learning the basics. Like learning to fly before you can crawl. It took a long time to un-learn all that...

Granted, but proves inconvenient when your friends come over for a game of Monopoly and you face a long, cold climb. (This is a great game! Why have I never played it before?) I wish for fish with my fish wish dish.

Ouch. You have my sympathy. From hard lessons like that I now back up obsessively. Still, worse things have happened to other writers... T E Lawrence left the manuscript of Seven Pillars of Wisdom on a train, and had to write it all again.

Dearie me... looks as if Thrust was right after all. There we all go, toppling.

And often not even that detailed. They may simply say, "I think you could bring this theme out more," or "I think the viewpoint may need changing here," or even "make it 10% shorter, I don't care how." Or they may saying genuinely helpful things like, "you've made her eyes blue here and brown...

Can something topple upon its axis? Surely if you topple, you topple off your axis. Innit? (Sorry, I may be a while catching up here... slow reader).

Well, Valkyrie exaggerates a teensy bit... :o Nonetheless I think a forum is a real gift to any writer, published or otherwise. It's just another place where people and readers hang out, and people feel free to express themselves without constraint. Some, it has to be said, more than...

Seeing as this thread is in the Writers' Showcase, not Writer's Block, I have been reading it in its entirety as a work of fiction. And I like it. Bravo. Author, author. The maggots chapter was the best bit.

Sigh... this whole thread strikes me as rather like a debate as to whether or not Robert Mugabe would accept the Nobel Peace Prize if offered it... :rolleyes:

All excellent points made by Kurt there! I like the point 6 about sadism especially. Rather like David Mitchell's revelation of the secret of fiction: "It's very, very simple. You create characters that the reader likes and doesn't want bad things to happen to, and then you make bad things...

1. Fascination with people. 2. Love of language. 3. A built-in, shockproof sh*t-detector. (E. Hemingway). Qualities rather than skills, perhaps...

Trying to have an idea. Hate that.

To use a favourite metaphor of mine (okay, simile), your quest for a proofreader is like polishing the Ming vase while the building is falling down. The best of luck with your book - but you seem to be slightly naive (take no offence for I mean none). PublishAmerica is a vanity publisher, it...

You can't go far wrong with Diana Wynne Jones or Eva Ibbotson, both of whom seem to be big influences on J K Rowling. Terry Pratchett is also unputdownable and has the same sort of humour. Glad you don't think much of the Chris Ryan style of storytelling. It sounds like you're more into depth...

Mathius, it seems you are asking two different questions, one about self-publishing, another about submissions to agents/publishers. The second question has only one answer, at least at this point in time. The *only* way to submit to agents and publishers is 12-point, single-sided loose-leaf...

Stewart, I think broadly you are correct. There is so much trash on Lulu that you could sift forever and not find a readable novel. However, I would not totally dismiss its usefulness, as I for one did find it useful. I had little difficulty in finding an agent to represent me, but then a...